Saturday, May 28, 2005

Will the world ever know the truth about Fallujah?

Did scores of Fallujans die, or was the number in the hundreds… or perhaps as many as 2,000 as some claim? Of its 350,000 population… were there only 8,500 remaining at the time Americans entered the city, or was the number closer to 25,000? And, after the Americans gained control over the Insurgency… how many Fallujans returned: 50,000; 100,000; 150,000 perhaps? And of those, how many stayed? Was the level of physical destruction to the buildings and infrastructure 25%, 50%, or was it as much as 80%? Is the price tag for all the destruction, even without accounting for the human component, $1-2-3 billion; or, as some claim, closer to $5 billion? Will the slant of the pen, depending on who is writing, be challenged soon… or is the truth buried in battle, never to surface but misrepresented by those with special interests?